Plain English becoming lost art in corporate America

Jun. 17, 2014
|

General Motors headquarters in downtown Detroit. GM got dozens of lawsuits consolidated in the Southern District of New York court. Owners are suing, claiming the GM recalls for faulty ignition switches have diminished the value of their cars. / Associated Press

by Brent Snavely and Alisa Priddle , Detroit Free Press

by Brent Snavely and Alisa Priddle , Detroit Free Press

Linguists, public relations professionals and management experts were not shocked when a General Motors document surfaced a few weeks ago that includes 69 words that engineers were told not to use when discussing its products.

Words to be avoided included "asphyxiating," "deathtrap," "disemboweling," "genocide," "grenadelike," and "powder keg."

But some of the advice was more extreme, for example, urging people to use such watered-down language as "does not perform to design" instead of "defect," and "condition" instead of "problem."

In fairness, GM is not the only company to encourage such euphemisms.

Ford, for example, has recalled vehicles at risk of "thermal events," when the diesel engine in the 2008 F-Series Super Duty pickup could result in flames coming out of the exhaust.

"In every industry we work with, there are certain words that companies don't want associated with their brand," said Matt Friedman, partner with Tanner Friedman, a public relations firm in Farmington Hills. "Sometimes, it's to fight misperceptions, and in some cases it's pet peeves, and in some cases it's driven by lawyers."

Amy Edmondson, a professor of management at Harvard Business School, said she was surprised by how exhaustive GM's list was.

"Sometimes, concerns about regulatory and legal issues are more dangerous than the issues themselves because it can lead people to communicate in incomplete and inaccurate ways, often giving rise to the very risks that they are attempting to avoid," Edmondson said.

Friedman said corporate-speak often downplays or clouds the actual meaning of the problem.

"It can create a communication gap between a company and its audiences. And sometimes it can come across as a company being disingenuous," he said.

Comedian John Oliver spent more than 10 minutes on "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" in May in a segment about GM recalls and the banned words.

But even for companies with a sense of humor about themselves, being the butt of late-night jokes won't make it any easier to change.

Edmondson said clearly communicating corporate goals and fostering a culture where employees feel comfortable speaking up when they spot a problem is harder than it sounds. There must be no fear of retaliation.

In some cases softer, or more neutral, language can lead to more responsive behavior and results.

For example, several years ago a hospital in Minnesota introduced a new policy of "blameless reporting," which replaced words such as "errors" and "investigations" with less judgmental words such as "accidents," she said.

Over time, Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota reduced preventable deaths and illnesses, according to her 2008 study.

But the person at the top must set the tone.

At Ford, outgoing CEO Alan Mulally often recounts the story of one of his early meetings after taking the helm of automaker in 2006. Executives at what became a weekly "Thursdays with Alan" ritual provided nothing but positive reports. Mulally asked why, if nothing was going wrong, was the company losing billions of dollars?

Mark Fields, Ford president of the Americas at the time, gamely stood up to say there were unsolved problems with a vehicle about to launch. He said it would be necessary to delay the model's introduction.

While his peers looked at him as if he was about to be tongue-lashed, Mulally stood up and applauded.

"Those were very senior, senior executives who apparently believed it's the proper thing to not speak up in meetings like this about problems," Edmondson said. "It is management's job to say absolutely speak up."

Tom Pink helps craft Lake Superior State University's annual list of banished words. He has some sympathy for corporate leaders who urge workers to use language cautiously.

"The way we communicate now, it is so easy for a text or e-mail to go into a lot of places you might not like it to go," Pink said. "Companies need to be careful about how they communicate in-house. Don't say anything to coworkers you wouldn't say to the public."

In 2011, an employee of an ad agency doing work for Chrysler tweeted disparaging remarks about Detroit drivers that was fed into Chrysler's official Twitter account. The employee was quickly fired.

Even so, corporate speak is getting worse.

Every year, Pink said his department is flooded with examples from the workplace although they tend to get beaten out by overused pop culture references such as "selfie," "twerking" and "hashtag," which made the 2013 list.

While GM's list of "words we don't use" grabbed headlines, there was an understandable purpose behind it. Another document released as part of the ignition-switch investigations urged employees that their explanations of safety issues should be accurate, factual and objective. It also warned against general and ambiguous descriptions.

Dana Muir, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, said the best way to balance the goal of communicating clearly while also avoiding future regulatory or legal trouble is use factual statements to describe issues.

"Creating a culture of safety and good management can be consistent with a legal strategy to minimize the likelihood that employees will engage in careless or exaggerated statements," Muir said. "It's important for people to understand that factual statements are more useful and compelling to upper management and they avoid the problem of being taken out of context in litigation."